Hosted, or cloud-based storage, refers to off-site or remote data storage that is typically provided by a third party. The third party may implement the hosted storage in a data center, and provide access to the hosted storage over a network, such as the Internet.
Encryption is the process of converting data, sometimes called plaintext, using an algorithm and an encryption key to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing the encryption key. The result of the process is encrypted information, sometimes called ciphertext.